Furthermore: Dissing the Prez

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Oprah favored the world with her insight that much of the criticism of President Obama — indeed maybe even most of it — is motivated by people who just can’t abide the thought of a man of African American heritage sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office.

Chris Matthews was more blunt on the delicate topic. Baying bigots, he said, are what have driven the bi-racial president down in the polls — not, for example, the unreassuring rollout of ObamaCare.

Oprah lamented that there’s a “certain level of disrespect” for the office, conflating criticism of Obama with disrespect for him. She cited the time some member of Congress (whose name nobody can recall) shouted out “You lie!” during an Obama State of the Nation address. With that bit of skimpy evidence, she rested her case.

Was there some momentous development we missed? In his first term, Obama himself once dismissed the notion of criticism of him being racially motivated. He was of the same racial composition when he won election, he noted. Same point can be made now. The Obama who’s getting a lot of critical guff now is the same Obama who won election to a second term. The country hasn’t all at once slipped back into Jim Crow.

For sure there are dolts who hold Obama’s racial heritage against him. And they’re widely recognized as dolts. On the other hand, there are well-meaning people — Oprah being perhaps Example No. One — who rush to his defense largely or solely due to his racial heritage.

Most Americans — we dare say even many right-wing cranks who are his most relentless critics — take a measure of pride in the fact that this one-time slave-holding country has elected a man of African-American heritage president.

The Oprahs and Matthews do Obama no favor in seeming to suggest that when the going gets rough for him, he needs a race card played in his behalf. That reveals, really, a level of disrespect all its own.